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Talk:Dororo/@comment-27499177-20190628133107/@comment-36700478-20190706151328
The indisputable 'identifies as male' is actually pretty disputable. I think the issue lies with Dororo's character and circumstances, as well as her youngest canon age (she and hyakkimaru have a 4 year age difference, and the original Hyakkimaru is also the youngest version of himself.). In short, Dororo herself is mysogynistic in the manga (Tezuka potrayed many characters as much more flawed and prejudiced, such as Hibikuro attacking the Princess Guard). She is a little orphaned child raised as a boy to remain strong and survive, as well as to keep the map on her body concealed for when someone else (cough husband and hopefully not a rapist cough) will be able to read it when she is under strong emotions. Dororo is obsessed with power and gets personally indignant at mention of her not having any by humans or demons. It's a coping mechanism for her incredibly difficult state, just like her thieving habits. And guess who has no power in the society she lives in? Who is forced to be treated unfairly and has no deciding strength over their fate? Who is likely to be abused? That's right, women. People mention the stripping scene all the time but omit the context of the scene - Dororo is being physically assaulted. A lot of times they also mention her rebuffing Hyakkimaru at the end scene - but Hyakkimaru is in the process of directly breaking her heart. Both of these are situations of extreme weakness where Dororo is being exposed and hurt. What people don't talk about is how she visibly develops a precocious crush on Hyakkimaru as a direct consequence of him treating her kindly. She becomes jealous at the thought of him thinking about other women. Is very flustered to be naked around him. Or becomes very vulnerable and listening intently when he describes his rules of chivalry and treating women kindly. Hyakkimaru is a soul seer, and he more or less abruptly spells it out that Dororo is female at the end to mirror Tezuka's intentions for the manga developments, tells her to grow up and become a beautiful woman (so basically to stop running away from herself). Of course because he's abandoning her, she tells him to piss off. Last but not least, Dororo is aged 10. That is not a whole lot of years. She seems to know she is a woman already, but she is knee deep in ignoring the pending harsh reality of that fact and would probably refuse it until it was impossible to hide - or face herself properly with Hyakkimaru's help. I am deeply sympathetic to the western community and their ideals, but this is the interpretation the Japanese fandom shares as a whole (has for decades) and being aggressive about out of context sentences seems counter productive to the idea of, well, a 'community'. Tezuka meant this work to be a simple story of karma and then indulged in his resentment towards war and samurai culture (his own family mirrored hyakkimarus). In his later medical work, Black Jack, he would, however, feature a trans man to the best of his medical knowledge at that time (as far as i've heard), and in his sci-fi works, there would be mention of struggling and persecuted queer characters. Just not this one. Here he pretty clearly wanted the 'dororo is a girl' twist. Cheers to yall.